IEEE PIMRC'14 PANEL DISCUSSIONS
Wednesday September 3, 2:00 – 3:40 pm, Room: South American B
P1: Opportunities and Challenges for LTE(-U) and WiFi coexistence in Unlicensed and Shared Spectrum
Organizer: Hamid Aghvami (King’s College London, UK)
Chair: Wan Lei, Huawei, China
Panellists: Havish Koorapaty (Ericsson, USA), Mihaela Beluri (InterDigital, USA), Paul Nikolich (Montclair, USA), Kamran Etemad (FCC, USA), Amitabha Ghosh (Nokia, USA), Ahmed K. Sadek (Qualcomm, USA)
There is a huge interest to operate LTE technology using unlicensed spectrum bands competing with WiFi for hotspot and small cell deployment. Several cellular vendors and operators are pushing for this idea in 3GPP, however, the WiFi community in IEEE802.11 are worried about this. The panel aims to address the pros and cons of the co-existence aspects of these two technologies in the unlicensed bands. The panel will also discuss the co-deployment of WiFi and LTE technologies in shared spectrum. The 3.5 GHz spectrum band in USA may be a key opportunity to realize such co-existence/deployment in multiple tiers of shared access with primary focus for small cells applications. Although many co-existence consideration across unlicensed and shared spectrum are similar, some may be different.
Thursday September 4, 2:00 – 3:40 pm, Room: South American B
P2: Mm-waves technology as an essential element for next generation mobile cellular systems
Organizers & Chairs: Ali Sadri (Intel Corporation, USA), Reza Arefi (Intel Corporation, USA)
Panellists: Amitabha Ghosh (Head of NAM Radio Systems Research, Networks, Nokia), Douglas Castor (Member of Technical Staff, InterDigital), Jianzhong Zhang (Senior director, Samsung Electronics), Kei Sakaguchi (Associate Professor, Osaka University)
Increasing the capacity of cellular networks is becoming one of the most challenging tasks of the mobile industry in this decade. As traditional mechanisms to increase spectral efficiency approach their theoretical limits, new and disruptive techniques are needed to satisfy the growing demand of mobile data traffic. Consequently, the fifth generation (5G) cellular systems are expected to make use of higher frequency bands, e.g. in mm-wave range, to increase the density of the future cellular networks. While these bands provide potential for greater capacity, their availability for 5G systems under suitable regulatory conditions needs to be procured. In addition, these bands also impose certain constraints on the design of the future systems to handle mobility and coverage towards the “edge-less” networks of the future where users, inclusive of people and devices, can enjoy ubiquitous gig-bit performance anywhere and anytime. This panel addresses the possible challenges of the industry faces considering the requirements of such systems. Discussion topics include antenna design for base and mobile stations, modulation and coding schemes, handover, small cell implementations, power consumption and limits, frequency bands and channelization, regulatory challenges and requirements, form factor, and other related topics.
Friday September 5, 2:00 – 3:40 pm, Room: South American B
P3: Cloud RAN – Disruptive Trends in Radio Access Network Architecture
Organizer & Chair: Ivan N. Vukovic (Nokia Networks)
Panellists: Durga Satapathy (Sprint, USA), Kenneth Stewart (Intel, USA), Petri Mahonen (RWTH-Aachen, Germany), Troels Kolding (Nokia Networks, Denmark)
In its first release in 2008, 3GPP Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard made a revolutionary step in reducing network complexity by removing Radio Network Controller (RNC) and pushing the processing towards the edge of the Radio Access Network (RAN). This new, flatter architecture with Base Stations or eNodeBs acting as wireless routers was hailed as one of the key ingredient of LTE enabling its success. Later, as LTE-A features of CoMP and Carrier Aggregation were added and HetNet became important, it has become apparent that some centralization of RAN functions was needed. In order to fully achieve the desired spectral efficiency gains of these features, cooperation between cells within a site (intra-site) and between sites including macro-sites and small cell sites (inter-site) was required. Furthermore, given the low latency and high bandwidth requirements of this cooperation, co-location of baseband processing might be viewed as key enabler. Additionally, centralization of some aspects of the RAN are also seen by some as a key enabler to HetNet where over time networks evolve to include ultra-high density of small cells. And finally, at the same time, some mobile network operators have been advocating new requirements for the future Radio Access Networks focused at an IT Server model with an objective of seemingly reducing their costs, and improving flexibility and time to market. The solutions proposed to address these new requirements often include the following pieces: low cost/low energy Remote Radio Heads (RRH), high speed optical network for baseband signal distribution (fronthaul) and centralized processing using virtualization technology enabled by Cloud infrastructure. The last piece defines the proposed Cloud RAN architecture. This panel will discuss drivers, benefits and obstacles of Cloud RAN architecture through the views of participants from the cross-section of industry and academia.
